Lab notebook template

Author

Your name here

Replace the text in this file and in _quarto.yml with relevant material.

Overview

This is a template to help you start an electronic lab notebook.

Before you begin

Before using this template, you need a few things set up:

  1. Install git, R, and RStudio.
  2. Create an account at https://gitlab.com, and share your username with Gaurav. He will add you to the lab usergroup, which gives you access to this template.
  3. If you are not already familiar with quarto/markdown, please watch this video: https://youtu.be/_f3latmOhew?feature=shared1

1 If you wish to do a deep dive on quarto/markdown, check out this playlist.

Getting started

Once you complete the above steps, you are ready to get going with your own lab notebook. The steps for doing so are described in this video:

Best practices

Whichever way encourages you to write in this notebook most consistently is the best way to use this notebook.

If after your first semester of using this template you feel that this isn’t working for you, please talk to Gaurav and we can brainstorm alternatives.

Here are some other resources regarding best practices for maintaining lab notebooks (not necessarily in a digital format). Note that these are mostly written from a molecular lab perspective and so parts might not translate directly to the type of work we do. But they are relevant anyway.

Open science

Please note that you should treat this Lab Notebook as a public document that is part of the lab record (because that’s what it is!), rather than a private space for journaling. The repository or website link for the lab notebook won’t be advertised anywhere, but it will be available for anyone to read through should they stumble across the link (or anyone we choose to share the link with).

For more information about open lab notebooks, check out this page on Wikipedia. You can also read about a practice of “working with the garage door open” at this site.